Reviews

Review: Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower – Warm holidays

Review: Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower is a great device for indoor and outdoor that can produce hot and cold air both.
4.5/5 - (52 votes)

In the summer we all get fans and sometimes even air conditioning in our house. Very often these are simple devices with a plug, an on / off button and possibly an extra position, but we are seeing more and more smart products appear in that category. Princess has now launched a product that is in line with that trend,  a smart tower fan that can also push warm air into the room , namely the Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower.

App, voice control or remote control

The Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower can be operated in three ways. You can control it via the free app, which you download on Android and iOS, the included remote control or voice control. Although the app is of course very useful, since most people have merged with their phone by now, the included remote control is a really nice extra. This way, people without an app or knowledge of voice control can easily operate the tower. This makes this product extremely accessible to everyone.

The app and the remote control offer the same functions, although some buttons are slightly different. For example, you have a blue and a red button on the remote control, for the cold and warm setting respectively. We do not come across those buttons in the app. Instead, there is a button that activates and switches off the heat setting. If you use the controls interchangeably, it can take some getting used to, but if you choose one of the two, fortunately nothing is wrong.

Whichever mode you choose – hot or cold – you get access to ten speed settings. If you choose the warm setting, you can also set the temperature. This can vary from fifteen to thirty degrees. In addition, there are three positions: normal, sleeping and natural. In the first position, the tower continuously blows a fine stream of air, while sleep mode ensures that the wind speed gradually decreases. This way your night’s sleep is not disturbed. The latter option should simulate a natural breeze, but opinions are divided on this. A good attempt is made, but actually that position irritates with its artificial wind speed and air dispersion.

The last two options are movement and timer. With the former, you make the tower oscillate, spreading the air throughout the room. With the second option it is possible to switch off the device after some time. You can choose from 1 to 24 hours. The above options are all available within the app and via the remote control and give us more than enough features to get enough out of the Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower.

However, it is also possible to set a schedule via the app. For example, you can have the Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower switch on at a fixed time of the day, so that you do not have to worry about it. It is also possible to link the Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa to the system. You do this via the appropriate applications. Once you have done that, you can also control the smart heat tower with your voice. Many functions are available, but sometimes the Google Assistant does not understand your command. If you simply keep it on and off, then no problems arise.

That said, we have noticed that the Google Assistant sometimes has doubts about the nature of the product. For example, when we use the smart Tado thermostat control via voice commands, the Assistant may also want to activate, deactivate or set the tower to a different temperature. In addition, when the tower switches off (automatically, because the correct temperature has been reached, or manually), we each receive a message in front of an open window. The temperature then suddenly drops, forcing Tado to draw conclusions.

Not a big problem in itself, but it is annoying that you have to wipe the same notification on your smartphone every day. However, Tado’s open window detection is a very useful function that we sometimes use, because sometimes the window is accidentally still open, so we do not want to disable that function. It may therefore be that the tower conflicts with your smart thermostat on a daily basis, but your experience can be very different.

Clear app

We have already mentioned it: the HomeWizard Climate app. The options are all clearly presented on the same page. However, setting a schedule is done within the settings of the app, because you may also want to use other Princess products. What is very nice: within the settings, it is also explained how to connect with the Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. So you don’t have to look up anything for that.

What’s good for Princess, of course, is the shopping cart button. You can click on it within the app, which will take you directly to your default browser and land on the company’s store page. Handy if you are looking for other Princess products, but somehow it is a bit lacking in space. The button feels a bit like the odd one out. If you have a Princess product at home, you will undoubtedly already know where to find it.

Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower – conclusion

Where a normal fan is a product that many people use gratefully, you can ask yourself whether this also applies to a fan that helps warm air into the room. It feels a bit like a niche product, meant for homes where insulation is bad. The house of the undersigned draft is still like crazy, so this product really offers a solution in the cold mornings when Tado is still busy heating.

Of course you can think of situations for yourself in which you would need such a product. For example in the bedroom, if it does not get warm quickly enough. Or the basement, if you’ve been there for a while. And otherwise it could of course be that you are cold and just love the heat. That’s all fine, because basically the Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower works exactly as advertised. Yes, there are minor irritations, but that hardly ever gets in the way of the experience. In any case, it is also clear that Princess has learned from the Smart Tower Fan and that can be seen in the installation and use.

The only thing left to consider is whether you think it’s worth the extra energy consumption. It may be that you have excellent insulation in your house, for example, so that turning on the heating is cheaper. However, it may take a little longer to get things just as warm as with the Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower. Also, of course, you cannot place a heater close to you if you are sitting comfortably on the couch or working behind your standing desk. So the thing may have a somewhat environmentally unfriendly character, but you make that decision for yourself.

Prositives of Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower

  • Nice and warm in a short time
  • Chic design
  • Easy installation
  • Accessible use

Negatives of Princess Smart Heating & Cooling Tower

  • Consumes quite a bit of energy
  • Difference remote control and app
  • Google Assistant sometimes does not know what to do
  • Only 2.4 GHz